Solved Phantom account on boot screen and wrong password message

I also had the phantom account bug.

Following the "Enable or Disable Automatically Sign in Account at Startup" tutorial did fix it but only while automatic sign in is disabled.

When I enable it, the phantom account comes back. This is after disabling the lock screen.

Can anyone help with this? (BTW thank you Brink for the tutorials, I've used a few and they're super helpful).

It’s a glitch after updates and a reboot as it tries ti use your account info to finish installing updates. Use netplwiz, uncheck the box so that password is required to log in. Reboot. Login, use netplwiz to uncheck password required box, input your password (if you use a Microsoft account for login, you must set up a pin in settings but still type your password in the netplwiz prompt). Reboot.

Sorry for the necro, but I've been dealing with this same issue for close to 2 weeks now, and just accidentally stumbled across this thread, and it finally fixed my issue.

Mine was slightly different, in that it randomly started, long after initial setup. Built the PC more than a year ago, and have been doing passwordless login without any problems, then it just randomly added the same phantom local account, immediately saying the password was incorrect, then would let me login once i manually changed accounts. There was no sign of another account through settings, or showing up on netplwiz.

Looking through the other replies, it seems you had other problems after, but disabling passwordless login, then re-enabling it and entering my MS account info has fixed it for me, and the local account that doesn't appear anywhere else is gone. Hoping this extra comment has added enough keywords for the next person having this issue to find the thread easier.